Monday September 10, 2007 6:08 pm

Harmonix Co-Founder Answers Questions About Rock Band

The Official Xbox Magazine’s podcast has an interview this week with Harmonix co-founder and president Alex Rigopulos about their upcoming game Rock Band. In the interview he talks about the game bundles, although light on concrete details he does confirm a band-in-a-box bundle that will include a guitar, drum kit and microphone. However, he goes on to say that the PlayStation 3 version will include a wireless guitar controller while the Xbox 360 version will have to include a wired guitar because Microsoft‘s wireless technology is too expensive to make the bundle reasonably priced. Since the 360 also has only two USB ports, the 360 Rock Band bundle will also be packed with a USB hub.

Rigopulos goes on to discuss the game’s career modes a little, saying there will be both solo career mode that progresses in a linear fashion similar to what Guitar Hero players are used to, but they are also including a less linear band career mode. In this mode you traverse to various venues trying to build up your fan base and in some cases return to previously played locations to maintain your fame there. Also it’s worth noting that the solo career mode will not include a bass career track so your options are vocals, guitar and drums in solo career mode. But Rigopulos did reveal that the finale songs for each career path (and therefore likely the difficulty distinctions throughout) will be different for each instrument, and he even said that at this point the drum finale will be The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

It is possible to play an instrument and sing simultaneously, if you want, in band mode(s).

There are no technical limitations that would prevent you from using your Rock Band controller with Guitar Hero, at least from a hardware perspective (there’s no indication on what might happen with Guitar Hero III).

There will be multiple SKUs of various configurations so not everyone who wants to play the game will have to buy the full bundle, but Rigopulos declined to make specific announcements about what might be available.

Despite not having a solo career path, bass will be playable on almost every other mode in the game.

They are including competitive modes, but they won’t be the focus since the game is primarily meant to be a co-operative multiplayer experience.

The game is really being touted as a platform rather than just a standalone game and Harmonix hopes it will be as significant to the music industry as MTV was back in the 80s, which isn’t too surprising given who owns Harmonix now. But this grandeur of vision would only be realized if they fulfill their promise on the downloadable content front, so expect much better support than you saw with Guitar Hero II on the 360.

well this is a nice from you actually just got it moved in today at my Apartment, and it looks awesome where its at.
Now I gotta pay some bills (and lots of them? damnit) and then order the HotRod Joysticks from Hanaho and then get a Marquee done.